Requiem (4 page)

Mrs Duncan winced as if he had shouted. Anderton shook his head slowly.

“We don’t yet know, I’m afraid. The post-mortem will tell us more.”

Mr Duncan opened his mouth as if to ask another question and then shut it again. There was a lengthy moment of silence in the room. Kate caught sight of a photograph of a younger Elodie on the mantelpiece, framed in silver. She had an impish grin on her face
and was staring out of the frame, pointed chin lifted. She looked as though she were laughing at them all.

Chapter Four

Kate had attended many post-mortems in the course of her career, but they had yet to become commonplace. She steadied herself with a deep breath. She always felt something like awe at the magnitude of death—how a whole, remarkable person could be reduced down to a waxen reproduction of themselves. The pathologist performing the autopsy was someone Kate hadn’t met before, a young man called Stanton. She had hoped it would be Doctor Telling, who she rather liked for being quiet and gentle and skilled at her job, but she was apparently on holiday for three weeks. Kate’s mind conjured up a rather bizarre mental picture of the gaunt, pale doctor sunning herself on a beach somewhere, still dressed in her pathologist’s scrubs. She dismissed the thought, as it was provoking an inappropriate grin, and brought herself back to the task in hand.

Anderton had cried off, citing a meeting, but Olbeck had met her at the coroner’s offices, turning up looking rather better than he had done yesterday. Presumably he’d not been out partying to the early hours the night before. Kate could understand
his decision to stay in; she could think of few things worse than having to observe an autopsy with a raging hangover. She said as much to Olbeck.

“What would you know about it?” he said, rather grumpily. “You never
 
get
 hangovers. You hardly bloody drink.”

“I can still imagine it.”

“Well, anyway. Let’s get on with it.”

Dr Stanton had a rather brusque manner, tersely commenting as he performed the various tasks that would untangle the mystery of Elodie’s death.

“Are there any indications of suicide?” asked Olbeck, who’d disappeared halfway through the operation to answer a text message, rather to Kate’s annoyance.

“Most definitely not,” said Stanton. He turned away from the table, leaning back against the instrument bench against the wall. “There’s no water in the lungs, which is always a good indication.”

“Ah.”

“And more pertinently than that, the hyoid bone is fractured.”

Kate knew the significance of that. “So she was strangled?”

Doctor Stanton looked at her appraisingly and then smiled rather flirtatiously.

“The indications are there. Bruises on the neck as well.”

“Right.”

“I don’t believe we’ve met before, have we? This will all be in my report, by the way. I’m happy to talk you through it—perhaps over coffee afterwards?”

Olbeck was grinning. Kate sighed inwardly. Flirting was one thing
, but doing it over the body of a dead girl was distasteful in the extreme.

“That’s fine, thank you. I can read it later.”

Stanton shrugged. “There’s one thing you should know.”

“Which is?”

“She was pregnant.”

Kate felt the familiar little tremor inside her
, as if a tiny foot had swung against her lower belly. When would she stop feeling that?

She cleared her throat.
“How pregnant?”

“Not very. First trimester. About ten weeks, I’d estimate.”

Olbeck had stopped smiling. “That’s something her parents didn’t know.”

“Or they didn’t tell us.” Kate tried to run a hand through her hair, knowing it was pure displacement activity, before realising it was tied back tightly. “We’ll need to talk to them again anyway.” She remembered something else. “What about drugs? Any indications?”

Stanton had begun to peel off his gloves.

“You’ll have to wait for the tox tests. I should have the results within a week. There was plenty of alcohol and not much food in her stomach.”

So Elodie had been drinking despite her pregnancy. Had she even known she
was
pregnant? Who was the father? If Elodie had known she was pregnant, had she told anyone else? Looking down at the body, shrouded now in dull green cotton, Kate felt tired. So many questions… It was hard to know where to begin.

“Do you know the time of death?” asked Olbeck.

Stanton was rinsing his hands under the tap. He pulled a handful of blue paper towels from the dispenser on the wall, dried his hands and threw the crumpled up ball of paper into a wastebin next to him.

“It’s hard to say exactly, as well you know. But
—like I say in my report—you can narrow it down to between about 3am and 5.30am the night before last. “

“He fancied you,” said Olbeck, when they were back in the car.

“No
, he didn’t.”

“Yes
, he did. It was obvious. You were definitely in there.”

Kate snorted. “Even if I was, I’m not going out with a
 
pathologist
, for God’s sake. Can you imagine going to bed with one, for a start? You’d always be wondering where their hands had been. Ugh.”

Olbeck chuckled. “Perfect partner for a
necrophiliac.”

“Well, quite.” Kate flicked the indicator on to turn left. “As for me, it’s thanks but no thanks.”

“All right, all right. I get the message.” Olbeck checked his phone and made a satisfied noise.

Kate glanced over.
“What’s up?”

“Nothing,” he said, smugly.

Kate sighed. “Don’t tell me. Your hot date for tonight.”

“Got it in one.”

“You have more hot dates than I have hot dinners,” grumbled Kate. “And what was with the texting during the PM? That’s not professional, Mark.”

“Oh, leave it out
, Kate. It could have been work-related for all you know.”

“Well, was it?”

Olbeck was silent for a moment. “It might have been.”

“
Was
 it?”

“No.” He grinned a little sheepishly. “But come on, it was only a minute. Besides, don’t tell me you’ve never done anything unprofessional at work.” He laughed a little. “Wait, what am I saying? This is DS Redman we’re talking about.”

Kate said nothing. She knew he was just teasing her, but his words had brought the painting sharply back to the forefront of her mind. Was she going to mention it? Should she?
Of course you should, and you know it
, a little voice whispered. Hard on the heels of that thought came the question,
Does Jay know yet? Am I going to have to tell him?
Kate shivered inwardly, already dreading the moment.

Chapter Five

 
The crime scene photographs were already pinned up to the whiteboards when Kate entered the office the next day. The night before, she’d taken the picture down and put it away in an upstairs cupboard. Then she’d locked the cupboard door. She’d tried to call Jay, but the call had gone straight to his voicemail, so she’d hung up without leaving a message. Cowardly but… Kate’s train of thought was derailed as Anderton crashed through the door.

“Morning team, morning team.” He strode up to the whiteboards and pinned up another photograph beside the one of Elodie’s body. This new picture made a cruel contrast: it was a recently taken shot, professionally posed, obviously a school picture. Elodie in the dark blue and silver uniform of
Rawlwood College, shoulders held back, pointed chin lifted, blonde crop neatly brushed. She looked younger, somehow, than she had when Kate had met her. Perhaps it was the uniform. Perhaps it was the expression on her face, eyes big and dark, a hint of anxiety in her gaze.

Anderton seemed to have recovered his mood and was back to his normal ebullient self. The rest of the team took up their usual positions, angled to keep their chief in sight as he paced up and down the room.

“Elodie Duncan,” said Anderton. “Our victim. Eighteen years old, a pupil at Rawlwood College, daughter of the College’s headmaster.”

“Stepdaughter,” said Olbeck.

“Yes, that’s right. Stepdaughter.” He stopped pacing for a moment, clutching his hair with one hand. “Her body was found at 7.06am two days ago by a jogger on the footpath that runs along the river by Arbuthon Green. Cause of death now confirmed as manual strangulation. Kate!” Kate jumped. “Wake up. Anything pertinent from the PM?”

Kate took a deep breath.

“She was pregnant. Early stages, about ten weeks.”

“Aha,” said Anderton. He turned and put a finger out, touching the school picture of Elodie almost tenderly. “That’s interesting. Do her parents know, I wonder?”

“That’s what we thought,” said Olbeck. Kate hadn’t had a chance to talk to him yet. She looked over at him, noting with irritation mixed with concern that he looked even rougher than he had done the other day. What was the matter with him? He was acting like a teenager. Immediately her thoughts snapped back to Jay, and by association, the painting.
You’ve got to do something or stop thinking about it,
she told herself.
This is how madness starts.

Anderton was still talking.

“We’ve spoken to Elodie’s parents. They’re not telling us much at the moment, but it seems our girl’s been moody, difficult, argumentative. Out of control, in her parents’ eyes. Now this may be nothing more than the usual teenage rebellion, but it may not be. I want all her friends interviewed. Let’s see what they can tell us. I’ve already cleared it with her father that we can use a room at the College for as long as we need for interviews. We need to find this ex-boyfriend of hers too.”

Jerry raised his hand.

“What about the bloke who found the body?”

“Yes, indeed. I want to hear his story myself. Told us he thought he saw someone drowning, jumped in to try and save them, pulled out the body. Now he may be telling the truth
, or it may be his way of covering up something more sinister.
Kate
.”

Kate came back to reality with a start. “What, sir?”

“Did you have a late night, or something? Wake up. What’s the jogger’s name?”

Kate groped for a moment and then thankfully
her memory returned.

“His name’s
Michael Deedham.”

“Deedham, right. We need to interview him again. Mark, Kate, come with me after this meeting
, and we’ll knock that off to start with.” Anderton reached the wall, turned sharply on his heel and began pacing back the other way. “Right, what else?”

Kate thought it was time she made a real contribution. “Mark and I will start interviewing her friends. They may know a lot more about Elodie’s life than her parents do.”

“Good point.” Anderton shot her a piercing glance. “Didn’t your brother know her?”

Kate felt her heart rate begin to speed up a little. She could see the painting in her mind’s eye: the river bank,
the mud, Elodie’s dead face. She swallowed.

“That’s right.” She paused for a second. “I’m not sure how well he
actually
knows her though.”

“Well, it’ll do for a start. What about girlfriends?
Her mother mentioned her best friend, whose name escapes me at the moment. Anyone?”

Olbeck
shifted his position, leaning against one of the tables.

“Amy Peters,” he said,
looking down at his notes. We’ll track her down.”

“The ex-boyfriend, too,” said Kate. “Reuben Farraday.”

“Her teachers,” said Theo.

“Good, good. All this needs to be followed up. Jane, get onto the CCTV from that stretch of the river. In fact, from anywhere near the last place she was seen alive, which was the Black Horse.”

Jane’s red curls bounced as she nodded.

Anderton finally came to a halt.

“Right, that’ll do to go with. Anyone else got anything to say?”

“You haven’t mentioned the pregnancy, sir,” said Kate. “Do we mention it in our interviews?”

“Christ, yes. How did I forget that?” Nobody answered him, although there were a few disconcerted glances exchanged. It was unusual for Anderton to admit to a mistake and even more unusual for him to make one. “So, Elodie Duncan was…what was it? Ten weeks pregnant when she died. Now, the question is, does this have any bearing on her death or is it coincidence? Why didn’t her parents mention it? Do they even know?” He ran both hands through his hair and dropped them to his side. “Yes, mention it. Well, see how the conversation is going and use your discretion. I want to know whether it’s important or not. Right, team, you’ve got your orders. Start digging. Get—”

“The evidence,” they all chorused, finishing his sentence. Anderton grinned.

“That’s right. Okay, Kate, Mark—let’s go.”

The jogger who’d reported the discovery of the body, Michael Deedham, lived in a red-brick Edwardian villa in Charlock, the neighbouring suburb to Arbuthon Green. Both Charlock and Deedham’s house were a great deal more prosperous and respectable-looking than the poky terraces and down-at-heel flats that made up most of Arbuthon Green.  Deedham was an athletic-looking man of around forty, balding and muscular. He had looked more at home in the damp tracksuit he’d been wearing when Kate and Olbeck had seen him at the crime scene than he did in the well-cut suit he was wearing when he opened the door to them. Although they’d rung ahead to announce their visit, he still looked a little disconcerted at their appearance.

They were ushered into a sitting room at the front of the house
that was furnished with a battered leather Chesterfield and a rather jarringly modern armchair. Children’s plastic toys and a jumble of wooden train set pieces were scattered over the worn Persian rug.

“Sorry about the mess,” said Deedham, kicking a battered plastic doll and a few toy cars over to the skirting board. “Two kids under three, what can you do?” He didn’t seem to require an answer. “What can I do for you?”

He had a brisk manner which Kate associated with teaching for a living. She asked him what he did for a job.

“I’m a management consultant,” he said. “With Seddons Hargrove.” Kate nodded to give the impression that she actually knew what a management consultant was. What was it exactly that they did?

Olbeck and Anderton had seated themselves on the Chesterfield, leaving Kate to choose the modern chair. She perched somewhat gingerly on its edge.

“We’d just like to talk to you again about the events of the day before yesterday,” began Anderton. “Take us through the timeline, so to speak.”

Deedham had taken the only other chair in the room, a rickety wooden one. He frowned.

“I’ve already given a statement.”

“I know, sir,” said Anderton smoothly. “This is very much standard procedure. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“I’m not worried. I just don’t understand why I have to go through it all again. It was a pretty distressing experience.”

“It must have been. So, you were on your usual morning run?”

Deedham sighed and gave in.

“That’s right. I run every morning, sometimes in the evenings as well. I’m training for the London marathon, and I have to put in the hours, because I’m deskbound for the rest of the day. Anyway, I was doing the usual route, along the path by the river, and I spotted something white in the water.”

“Could you see it was a person?”

“Not at first—I just saw this large, white thing in the river, then this hand came up.” He raised his own arm to demonstrate. “And I think, my God, it’s someone drowning. So of course I kicked off my trainers and leapt right on in.”

“You didn’t realise that the girl was already dead?”

Deedham looked annoyed.

“No, I didn’t. Not until I got her out onto the bank anyway. Look, what was I supposed to have done, leave her to drown?” He pulled himself up. “I mean, I thought she was drowning. Jesus Christ, next time I won’t bother.”

“All right, Mr Deedham. We know you were trying to do the right thing. We just have to have everything absolutely straightened out, to make sure we’ve got everything down correctly.”

Deedham ran a finger around his collar, as if it had suddenly become too tight.

“I tried mouth to mouth,” he said in a clipped tone. “Now you’re probably going to tell me I was wrong to do that as well.”

Kate and Olbeck exchanged glances.

“Of course not, Mr Deedham,” said Kate, taking up the conversation. “That was very public-spirited of you. I suppose even though you knew she was dead, you thought there might be a chance to bring her back to life?”

Deedham nodded. All of a sudden his eyes filled with tears.

After a moment, he said with a catch in his voice, “I didn’t try for long. I could see it wasn’t going to work. She was cold as anything, lifeless—like a doll, really…”

He trailed off into silence. Anderton let it spool out for a couple of seconds and then asked, “Did you know Elodie Duncan, Mr Deedham?”

Deedham stared.

“
Know
 her? What, aside from pulling her out of the river?”

“Yes. Did you know her in
—life, shall we say?”

Deedham was still staring. “No. I’d never seen her before in my life.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, of course. Why?” Nobody answered him. “I promise you I’d never clapped eyes on her before, poor girl.”

“You know that she was the daughter of the Headmaster, Thomas Duncan, at Rawlwood College?”

“Was she?” Deedham rubbed his balding head. “No, I didn’t know that.”

“Have you any connection to the College?”

Deedham got up out of his chair and stood behind it, gripping the back of it.

“No, I haven’t got any
connection
to the College. I don’t understand all these questions. What are you implying?”

“It’s standard procedure, sir,” said Kate, knowing that Anderton liked her to step in at these moments.
It’s something about the softer voice, Kate
, he’d said when they’d talked about it. She’d called him an utter sexist, but it did seem to work when a suspect was becoming aggressive. “I’m sorry if you find this intrusive, but you have to understand that in a murder case, we’re operating from a standpoint of complete ignorance. We have to ask a lot of questions to try and see where we’re going.”

Deedham looked at her. She smiled
, and he looked a little mollified.

“You’re being very helpful, sir,” Kate added. “We are very grateful. As I’m sure Elodie’s parents are for what you tried to do for their daughter.”

“Okay,” said Deedham, shortly. He sat down again, pulling at his jacket sleeves. “I’m being totally honest with you. I’d never seen her before or heard of her, and I had no idea she was anything to do with whatever it was College. That’s all.”

There was the sound of the front door banging open and then the squeal of young children’s voices out in the hallway. A few seconds later, the doorway opened and a yelling toddler barrelled into the room. The little boy came to a screeching halt as he realised there were three strange adults in the room.

“It’s all right, Harry, it’s all right,” said Deedham, picking his son up. The boy hid his face in his father’s broad chest. A woman put her head around the door.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, looking puzzled.

“It’s the police,” said Deedham. His wife’s face clouded. “They want to know whether I knew Elodie Duncan.”

“Who?”

Deedham looked at the police as if to say ‘you see?’

“That poor girl I pulled out of the river.”

“Knew her?” His wife came fully into the room. She was a small woman, neat and pretty, with a chin-length bob haircut. She had a baby settled on her hip, a girl of about eight months who looked at the police officers with round eyes and began sucking her small thumb.